When strong engines roar, mountains of mud spray through the air, and tractors thunder across the terrain, the Sačurovský Traktor is about more than just motorsports and adrenaline. At this year's fantastic event, something very special was achieved: Together, a wonderful support was raised for little Olívia.
The ADELI Medical Center was represented by Managing Director Claudia Poidock and her husband, physiotherapist Richard Riedl. Olívia received a voucher for a two-week stay including accommodation and meals for herself and an accompanying person.
As part of the charitable story surrounding "Sačurovský Traktor", two forms of help thus came together: the financial solidarity of the local people at the extraordinarily popular event and the professional contribution of neurorehabilitation.
Who is Olívia?
Olívia: The girl who wants to make her legs dance
At the ADELI Medical Center, you meet seven-year-old Olívia, who moves with the lightness of a child who is just beginning to discover the world. Her mother Lucia accompanies her from one room to the next. Both are smiling, and at first glance, one might think they are on a small holiday trip.
Yet with every step her daughter takes, Lucia knows how much hard work lies behind this seemingly everyday movement. And then there is a major paradox: Although movement brings Olívia joy, it can at the same time also harm her.
"I am very worried about how Olívia will grow," says her mother Lucia. "We have already seen eight orthopedists, and apparently no one here in Slovakia can really help her."
Olívia was born in Vranov nad Topľou after a pregnancy that, according to the doctors, had been completely uneventful. Only after birth did it turn out that the baby was born with an open back (spina bifida). From Vranov, she was immediately taken to Košice. The first months of her life therefore unfolded completely differently than her parents had imagined.
Until her ninth month of life, Olívia only lay down. She could not sit and could not crawl. Her body did not develop the way it seems to happen quite naturally in a healthy child. In her ninth month of life, she underwent surgery during which doctors removed a developed lipoma. For a short time, it seemed as though her development could now begin. Olívia gradually learned to sit. Then to stand. And finally to walk.
Today, Lucia smiles when spina bifida is mentioned. She says Olívia was actually only "grazed" by it. The real problem began elsewhere.
At the age of four, Olívia injured her foot. A small puncture wound developed into a severe complication: osteomyelitis, an infectious bone inflammation, developed at the heel. Following initially unsuccessful treatment, pus formed in the heel area.
Although the infection has since healed after surgical cleaning and several treatments with strong antibiotics, the wound keeps opening up under strain – such as when walking – over and over again. And yet Olívia wants so badly to run and jump!
Every step, even during rehabilitation, is therefore simultaneously opportunity and risk. If the wound opens again, surgery may become necessary once more, along with a hospital stay and a long recovery period.
Mama Lucia therefore hopes to find a specialist who will look at Olívia's foot holistically and develop an individually adapted orthosis suitable both for the way to school and for rehabilitation.
In cases of spina bifida, rehabilitation must not be neglected. Otherwise, further problems can arise, such as poor spinal posture, scoliosis, or asymmetrical joint loading.
Solving each individual health problem often means long journeys for the family to medical specialists, orthopedic technicians, and rehabilitation facilities. The financial burdens necessary to provide even a young patient with the best possible quality of life are hard to manage without outside support.
And so the most important question Lucia is seeking an answer to remains:
Will Olívia ever be able to walk safely one day?
We believe that she can get closer to her dream: to make her legs dance, to run, to jump, and to discover the world like any other child.
#OliviaBaškovská #Neurorehabilitation #SpinaBifida #Neurorehabilitácia #RázštepChrbtice #Neurorehabilitation #Lipoma
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